Living in the past

A BURDEN of talks on Indian football is its fourth place in the
1956 Olympic Games. Sadly, the frequent reference to it for
nearly five decades is beginning to dull as our only meritorious
achievement.

Occasionally, we have been able to raise our heads, thanks to the
gold medal in the Jakarta Asian Games in 1962 and the bronze
medal in the Bangkok Asian Games in 1970. But, overall, the
picture is depressing. This, despite our teams taking part in
more events than before the Melbourne Olympics.

Increased international participation, with further impetus
through the conduct on home ground of the 1982 Asian Games and
the Nehru International Gold Cup annually in the 1980s and
biennially in the 1990s before being shelved, has not yielded
encouraging results.

Pause to reflect on this. The two teams India defeated in
Melbourne were Japan in the first round and hosts Australia in
the next, which was the quarter-final. Charting the subsequent
progress of the two on the world stage would be worthwhile.

Strictly speaking, Japan and Australia were not novices. The
Football Association of Japan was founded in 1921 and affiliated
to FIFA first in 1929 and after the second World War in 1950. The
Australian Soccer Federation was founded in 1961 and affiliated
to FIFA in 1963. But football was played in Australia much
earlier, as is evident from the tour in the 1930s by an Indian
Football Association team.

But at the Melbourne Olympics, neither Japan nor Australia was
great shakes. Football was very much a minor sport in those
countries. Australian soccer got a leg up through the influx of
East Europeans following the Hungarian revolution around the time
of the Olympics. It built itself up steadily, and made the final
rounds of the World Cup in 1974 when it was limited to 16 teams
and was frustrated by Iran in the Asia-Oceania two-legged play-
off for the 32nd place in the final rounds of the last World Cup
in France.

Japan, on the other hand, struggled and qualified from Asia for
France 1998, where its fans and it made a fine impression. The
Asian industrial giant had hired former FIFA chief coach, Dettmar
Cramer, to guide its 1964 Olympic team. Four years on, Japan
became the first Asian country to win an Olympic medal. Some of
its stars, like Kunishige Kamomoto, proved good enough to shine
in tough, higher level European football. Hidetoshi Nakata, of
the 1998 World Cup team, plays in Italian Serie A and commands an
appreciable transfer fee.

In the recent FIFA Confederations Cup, a dress rehearsal for next
year's World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the currently third
highest ranked Asian team defeated Canada and African and Sydney
Olympic champion Cameroon and drew with Brazil in the group
matches, beat Australia in the semi-final, and then lost only to
world champion France.

Japan and Australia have progressed because of good organisation
and administration. Against this, Indian football administration
stands out like a sore thumb.

True, the All-India Football Federation, the state and district
associations have made sporadic efforts to bring some order in
the conduct of our football. Like participation in a maximum of
seven tournaments outside its state by a team, limiting the
number of replays, and introducing tie-breakers to ensure
schedules are maintained so as not to disrupt other events. Of
late, the AIFF has even forced organisers to complete their
events in a fortnight.

All these measures have failed abysmally. Instead of streamlining
our organisation, they have virtually killed our football. Like
throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because flights of
fancy, rather than hard, cold reason backed by experience and
visualisation, have marked the regulations and their amendments.

Take the Federation Cup. Introduced by the late A. T.
Vijayarangam to raise money for clubs and players, it is not
known if in over two decades it has achieved these targets. And
tinkering with it, like running it at several venues and over a
prolonged period, has killed the goose that laid golden eggs at
least for the organisers. Now there is a move to revert to the
format of the earlier years.

From the sixties to the early eighties on the South India circuit
more in Kerala and Tamil Nadu than in Andhra and Karnataka,
tournament fixtures were known more by word of mouth than through
the sanctity of a printed draw. This contributed to a circus and
its several legs. The organisers and the national body's knee-
jerk reactions and remedies brought short-term relief. Rather
swept troublesome issues under the carpet, where they festered to
burst into predictable sores.

Now comes the announcement from the Mumbai District Football
Association that two teams, Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers
and Bombay Customs, will be spared relegation from the local
super division as they would strengthen themselves by recruiting
players. A dangerous precedent, as a relegated team would not
have to win its way back but would only have to recruit players
and be better equipped for the coming season.

Three years back, the WIFA had done one better. It had included
in the super division a new team, Bengal Mumbai Football Club,
which sort of temporarily justified its inclusion by winning the
super division league as also the Rovers Cup. Last year BMFCs
results and financial troubles gave rise to murmurs that one
swallow does not make a summer. Far worse, they made for
pondering over the effectiveness and wisdom of having a
weathercock as overall administration.

It is time that our football administration takes a leaf out of
its more stable and advanced counterparts elsewhere in the world,
and frames rules after much thinking and sticks to them.